Empowered parent meetings – Touch The Future

I go deep. One of the best workshops I give is death and dying. I talk about what kids can and cannot do. I talk about the value of storytelling, about art. I am constantly supporting people, helping them know and grow. The other thing is that I know that I do, is while I greet kids every day I also greet parents and I’m not afraid to cry with them or hold them. I have high standards. I expect them to pitch in. I expect them to do the things that they need to do but boy I’m there for them if they need me and there’s ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Things to think about

Does your program have an orientation?
Does your program have parent meetings? If so, what topics do you discuss?
Do you work at being nonjudgmental and meeting parents where they are?
In what other ways do you support parents in their growth as a parent/person?

Highlights from Playful Wisdom
by Michael Mendizza featuring Bev Bos and Joseph Chilton Pearce

Principals continued

5. Learn about and remain in tune with the ages and stages of human development.

Each age and stage represents a different reality. It is the adult’s responsibility to rediscover the age-and-stage-specific reality the child is in and to meet the child in that unique reality. How can a child possibly trust and respect an adult who fails to do this? It is ever so clear to them that they are not being seen for who and what they actually are.

6. Seek the company, understanding and support of a like-minded community.

It does take a village or at least a few people who share our core values to raise a healthy, sane child. This is especially challenging if your heart demands that you raise your children in ways that others feel are wrong, neglectful, irresponsible, and even dangerous. Having a home birth is an example. Other examples may be choosing not to vaccinate, home schooling and unschooling, not circumcising, extended breastfeeding, not watching TV or playing brain-numbing computer games. There are many others. All of these are pressures culture imposes demanding conformity through rejection first of the parent by the mediocre norm, and through the parent pressuring the child to be mediocre rather than the miracle nature designed.

We have an orientation for our parents. It lasts for five hours. If you don’t come you don’t get in. And this is the kind of thing that I talk about, about the list of human, the conditions we need to be human, what it means to us. I also do a parent meeting once a month and I don’t waste people’s time. I go deep. One of the best workshops I give is death and dying. I talk about what kids can and cannot do. I talk about the value of storytelling, about art. I am constantly supporting people, helping them know and grow. The other thing is that I know that I do, is while I greet kids every day I also greet parents and I’m not afraid to cry with them or hold them. I have high standards. I expect them to pitch in. I expect them to do the things that they need to do but boy I’m there for them if they need me and there’s ifs, ands, or buts about it. I think they know that. I think it’s a feeling. I’ll tell you a wonderful story about a momma that walked in one day and I could tell by the look on her face that things had not gone well somehow and I walked up and I put my arms around her and she burst into tears. I said, “Come with me,” and I grabbed her and pulled her on my lap and she said, “Oh my gosh Bev, how did you know?” I said you looked a little tentative. That’s what it was. You looked just a little tentative. And she said, “I had the biggest fight with my husband I’ve ever had with anybody!” and it just took that few minutes. She didn’t have to tell me. She just needed someone to hold her for a minute. One of my other very best stories is a wonderful mother came to school and she’s come from the background that may be different than a lot of the other people that come to our school and she was dressed, perhaps some people would say in an inappropriate way, maybe fewer clothes than she should have had on, maybe. I don’t know. Just a different style. And she walked in and she walked through, she’d been to the orientation, she walked through and she looked at everybody else and then she said, “I think I should go home and change my clothes.” I put my arms around her and I said you look just beautiful and you look like you’re just ready to pitch in here. I said don’t you go home. And she has brought to our place some life and some spunk that we don’t always have. And so I think, I work, I’m not saying that I do it well, but I work really hard at being non-judgmental. Accepting people the way they are. Accepting the fact that I have been on this planet a whole heck of a lot longer than they have and that everybody, I think everybody is absolutely doing their very best every day.

The best that they can with the knowledge that they have and where they are and all we can do is help them grow and we just have to do that. It’s what it means to be a community. It’s not tearing them apart. It’s not putting them down. Not arguing with how they feel about it, but just accepting where they are. I remember being there myself. You know the school where I’ve been involved all these years is a cooperative school. Parents participate. One or the other, it can be grandparents too. One of the things that you get when you have an environment like this that includes all these people is you have people with all sorts of skills, people who know people in communities. I know somebody who can help us with that. At the last meeting we were talking about, money is always a huge issue in this school, we’re always struggling. We don’t have any federal funds or state funds, it’s just tuition which is not very high, and then the fund raisers that we would do and try not to kill our people with fund raisers. But a man spoke up and he said, “Well, you know what, this is what I do. I know that there’s money out there. I can do this,” dat, dat, dat, dat. And I said to him, “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” He said, “Why didn’t you ever ask?” And thought it was such a funny moment because neither one of us were aware that he does know things. So one of the things that we try to do in the school, there’s always a parent who’s the treasurer, always somebody who helps us with this, assists us with that. Do you know anything about that? One of the things you don’t want to do in a place like that is just work them to death. Say I know you do this well but just asking for their input. When it comes to having a meeting of the fund raising committee, do you know anything? Can you help us? You know what it’s fragile but it’s just absolutely vital. I have learned more from parents than I think I’ve learned from anybody in the world.